Description
Photograph of Site of Llanwern Steelworks. Taken by Toby Driver on 24/07/2012.
Llanwern Steelworks were originally built for Richard Thomas & Baldwin, they were subsequently owned by British Steel and are currently owned by Tata Steel Europe (formerly known as Corus Group). The site was built on a green field site extending 4.8 km (3 miles), south of the main railway line, between 1958 and 1962.
The site was an integrated steelworks comprising blast furnace and coke oven complex, hot and cold continuous stripmills and galvanizing plant. Together with Port Talbot works the plant has produced up to 3.5 million tons of hot rolled steel strip per year. The output was taken by railway to Shotton for coating, to Trostre for tinplating, to Ebbw Vale for rolling and coating, or direct to the Midlands motor industry.
Llanwern Steelworks suffered from the lack of a deep-water iron ore unloading terminal, steel making ceased in 2001 and the heavy end of the works was demolished in 2004. In 2011 the hot strip mill was under threat of closure but continued to employ 1600 employees and roll more than 1.5 million tonnes of steel per year.
Since 2006 work on the former steelworks has been undertaken to clear and make the site environmentally safe. From 2010 development has been underway to build 4,000 new homes, along with primary schools, a 100-acre business park, a library, a doctors' surgery, police station, shops, sporting facilities, parkland, habitats for wildlife including lakes.
Ref: AP_2012_3182
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